Robert W. Walker (35 page)

-20-

Kendra Cline's plaintive cries in the dark were like daggers plunged into Stroud's soul.
Esruad
tried desperately to hold him back, to tell him he must ignore the pitiful pleas of the woman, if he were to survive this day. Stroud, unable to listen anymore to
Esruad
, tore away and raced down the intricate, involved labyrinth now laid out for him by the demon. The walls of this maze were hard-packed clay molded together with the bones of men. Stroud rushed along its narrow and narrowing course to a point where his shoulders scraped the walls and his clothing
tore
on the outcroppings of bone. He then reached a point where the bones had taken on flesh and life and were reaching out at him, tearing at him as if they belonged to prisoners in cells who just wished to touch another human being.

Stroud tore loose from the wall of hands and found
himself
standing before a stairwell of stones. He heard again Kendra's screams and he rushed up the stones only to have them crumble below his weight, taking him to the floor once again, and now the stones were, one by one, hurled at him.

Esruad's
shield around him held. He drew on
Esruad's
magical strength, making the leap to the next level, pulling himself up as if he were weightless, a kind of angel, he thought, an avenging angel.

"Let the woman go!
Ubbrroxx
! Take me, and let the woman go!" he shouted at the darkness around him. In the distance, through what appeared to be a tunnel that went on through eternity, he saw a light, a green, glowing light which touched off a fire.

"You want the woman ... so come for her,"
Ubbrroxx
said, his voice curled by a laugh.

Esruad
struggled with Stroud to use his head. "Another sacrifice is nothing to ending the power of this evil, Stroud!"

From the records uncovered by Leonard and
Wisnewski
, in the
very
written words of
Esruad
, Stroud had learned that he must locate the geographic center of the ship. He now stared down the tube of flame ahead of him. "But this is it ... this is where it lives,
Esruad
."

Esruad
had no argument for this.

Stroud knew that momentarily he and
Esruad
would come face-to-face with the true demon...

No more vile little familiars, beasts with tarantula bodies or tentacles, no more substitute horrors. Once Stroud penetrated the center,
Ubbrroxx
had no place else to hide and could take no more camouflage, create no more apparitions. It wasn't anything
Esruad
had said, nothing that Stroud had learned from the records, only a peaceful inner power called knowledge. The offshoots of the creature, its telepathic powers, its havoc, all emanated from here, and at the very back of this chamber it had Kendra.

It had come down to Stroud and the Satan of the Etruscans,
Ubbrroxx
.

Stroud felt fortified, however. He did not feel alone, not with
Esruad
within him, cloaking him in his impressive magic.

Stroud started across the dark interior of the new cell he had reached when out of the dark on his right side a flying creature loped by his head, almost striking him. Stroud saw only the black wings of the beast as it swooped, until his light hit it, and he saw that it was an enormous vampire bat, not unlike the ones that he had done battle with in the caverns outside Andover, Illinois. Stroud heard others screeching in the dark, piercing the blackness with their beady, blind eyes.

"
Ubbrroxx
is drawing on your fears, your worst nightmares, Stroud," he told himself.

Stroud tried desperately to get a grip, but it was like looking into the graves of the many vampires he had personally driven into eternity with the long-spiked, chemically poisoned stakes he had used. Something roared like a beast to his left and then a den of snapping, snarling beasts rose up in Stroud's light, approaching. It was
Kerac
and his band of werewolves, monsters that Stroud had wiped out in the northernmost woods of Michigan the year before, after tracking one of their
number
from the streets of Chicago.
All here, along with the vampires ... unreal, and yet so real and threatening.
Then they pounced in unison with an attack from the vampires.

"Hold to your faith in me, Stroud!"
Esruad
fired his mind with the message as Stroud saw all of the monsters of his mind flattened out against the invisible but powerful shield that
Esruad
continued to display.

The werewolves and the vampires came in again and again, trying desperately to destroy the shield, to put a dent in it, but it was useless. "So long as you believe in me,"
Esruad
told him in a whisper deep within his mind.

The creatures outside the protecting cube now became people, and in their faces, Stroud began to realize who they were.
Ubbrroxx
now was sending forth the images of all of the people whom Stroud had come into contact with--innocent people--who had lost their lives around him, some due directly to their association with him, some indirectly. Among them were Leonard, soldiers he had known in the war, fellow cops he had known in Chicago when he was on the streets there,
Magaffey
, who was so instrumental in helping him uncover the vampire colony in Andover, the band of mercenaries he had paid to die in their effort to help him wipe out the werewolf herd in Michigan. All those who had lost their lives in Stroud's various crusades now stared in at him, asking him to join them. Even his grandfather's apparition was among the specters.

Ubbrroxx
was working on a very different level now, but Stroud remained firm in his convictions and his trust in
Esruad
. He noted that among the dead who wandered about the cube, pleading with him to come join them, there was no sign of
Wisnewski
or Kendra, and this gave him hope for their well-being.

"How long are we going to stand still for this?"
Esruad
asked from within.

Stroud took his meaning, stepping through the horde of ghosts who had for so long inhabited his nightmares.

They reached out, flattening their ethereal hands against the cube enveloping him, and where this occurred their limbs disappeared into a wispy mist. Stroud stalked on, shouting, "I'm coming for you,
Ubbrroxx
! Nothing will keep us apart ... nothing."

Stroud spoke a silent dialogue with
Esruad
as he continued on.

Why did you imprison yourself in the crystal skull for all these years?

To be here now...

To fight the beast again, after failing the first time?

We failed the first time because we were weak, fearful ... worse, we became willing accomplices.

Not you.

All of us.

And that is what will occur now if the evil is not ended by us?

I fear so, yes.

Then we won't let it happen. Armed with what we know now about
Ubbrroxx
, its character ... and your magic--

It has great powers of its own.

But we have a chance.

Yes.

Because this thing fears you greatly.

It fears us greatly
... us.

Tell me what to do.

The discussion was interrupted by another bout of piercing cries from Kendra.

Stroud stared ahead from where the sounds continued to roll down the corridors of the black ship. "God, I can't stand that."

Put her out of your mind.

I can't do that.

You must.

Just tell me what to do next!

Stroud listened to
Esruad's
communications as they spun about the coils of his brain, pinging off the metal strip below his scalp. As he did so, he looked again in the direction from which the screams continued. Horrible, nerve-ripping screams, like the cries of a bobcat locked in a bloody trap. It was heart-wrenching to think that Kendra Cline was in so much pain.

Kendra Cline and Dr.
Wisnewski
continued aboveground through the throng of zombies, and as they neared the final end of the human wall of flesh, they began to see a difference in the zombies at the far exterior of the circle around the pit. Some of the zombies were moving, searching, looking lost and confused,
even
asking questions of a weak nature. Many were amazed to find themselves here, confused beyond words. Others had begun to race away, seeking cover, and this caused some gunfire which was immediately halted by screaming shouts on the soldiers' side of the barricades ahead of Kendra and Wiz.

"Christ, we could be shot ourselves!" shouted Wiz to her.

Kendra tried desperately to reach Nathan over the radio and thankfully, she found the radio clear of static. She got an operator on the other end and shouted, "Get me the commissioner."

"Who is this?"

"Dr. Cline and Dr.
Wisnewski
!
Hold your fire!"

"No shit!"

"We're back from the pit."

"Holy shit!
We thought you were--"

"Get Nathan for me, now!"

"Right, right ... will do!
Over."

Only a few minutes passed while Wiz and she were held up at the barricade where others, former zombies, also wanted through, some pawing at one another, still quite out of their heads.

Nathan shook the scene when his powerful voice was amplified through a bullhorn. "Let those people through! All of them! Let them pass!"

Like refugees, the line of migrating, former zombies began moving further away from the center of their troubles. As soon as Wiz and Kendra cleared the barricades, Nathan pulled them aside.

"We had thought you'd become one of them," Nathan said. "Thank God we were wrong. How did you bring these others around?"

"We didn't," said Wiz.

"But ... what does this mean?"

"Only one possible explanation," said Wiz.

"So many coming out of their forced condition," continued Nathan, quite amazed.

"It seems to be only those at the fringes on the wall," said Kendra, "but it's a sign, a wonderful sign."

"What kind of a sign?" asked
Nathan.

"It means that whatever is in control of these people has been considerably weakened by Stroud."

"Are you telling me Stroud is still alive and that he has actually affected this
--
"

"Yes, very much alive. We've been trying to get to you by radio, but we were jammed."

"And Stroud?
Have you been in radio contact with him?"

She hesitated only a moment before lying. "Yes, I tell you he is still alive, and he has made a great impact on this thing, as you can see."

"Those people coming to ...
are
they clean of the disease?"

"Yes, you must take them in. You must open your lines to them," she insisted.

"It will lessen the strength of the creature," added Wiz, who found a place to fall out, weakened by his experiences in the pit and the loss of his good friend, Leonard.